Two Ways To Go
By
John C. Orlando, Jr.
Covenant Presbyterian Church, Abilene TX
28 November 2004
Text: Psalm 1
Background:
It has been observed
that Psalm 1 serves as the introduction to the entire Psalter, as it will set
before us the striking contrast between the righteous and the wicked, and the
consequences to each one, both in their present lives, and in the future destiny
of each one.
Intro
“Honey, why don’t you pull over and ask someone for directions.” How many of us guys have heard this desperate (and wise!) plea from our wives whenever we go on a trip! But, undeterred by such wisdom, we press on, sure that we will be able to find our way—all we have to do is keep following the signs. But then, for some mysterious reason, the signs do not take us to where we thought they would, and we find ourselves driving aimlessly along, hopelessly lost. We finally come to realize what our lovely wives realized hours earlier: We need someone who has an in-depth knowledge of the area to tell us how to get to where it is that we want to go.
Well, as we come to our text this evening, we discover two very different ways that we can go: There is the way of the righteous, and there is the way of the wicked, and they lead to very different places. Signs are posted, and there is a lot of guidance along each way so that it is certain that we will reach the destination that each way ultimately leads to. Let us first look at:
I. The Way of
the Righteous
A. It is Blessed – (V 1) – “How blessed is the man...” – The word “Blessed” may be paraphrased as “how rewarding is the life of,” or “to be envied is the man…” Being in right standing with God is without question the most blessed thing that could ever be said of a person. And, living according to God’s designs is what will ultimately produce a rewarding life. It is blessed by what it does, and what it does not do, and it is blessed by what it is. Let’s examine each of these three things by first looking at:
B. What the Blessed Man Does Not Do: “who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” Here we are given a glimpse into the subtle spread of the deadly disease of sin. To make this point, the Psalmist uses the activities of walking, standing, and then sitting. The physical activity moves from more active to least active, but the mindset and disposition associated with those activities moves from least active to more active, or, if you will, from merely considering or listening to something to actually having that become a settled disposition of the heart. Let’s examine these more closely:
1. “who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked” – How a person views the world is directly related to what they believe about God and how God interacts with the world. The philosophy of the world, or the counsel of the wicked, is diametrically opposed to the things of God because ultimately it does not believe rightly about God. And what we need to realize is that the counsel of the wicked is utterly pervasive. We are constantly bombarded by it whether it is through the entertainment industry, false religions, or, even within the church.
This ungodly counsel can take many forms. The predominate form that it takes in our society today is in what is called “Post Modernism.” This philosophy is broad and there are many facets to it, but at the very basic level, it holds that there is no objective absolute truth, and since that is the case, all value systems, beliefs, and lifestyle choices are all equally valid. If there is a God, we can’t know for certain whether God exists. If He does exist, the last thing we can do is claim some kind of exclusivity; to claim that there is only one way to get Heaven. To do that would be to violate the chief ethical value of postmodernism: "tolerance."
Of course, their understanding of tolerance leaves much to be desired. You see, the truth, by its very nature, is intolerant, because something is either right, or it is wrong. It is either true, or it is false. The truth doesn't care about what we think about it, it simply is. We are either going to accept the truth, or we are not. And here is an even greater irony: if we don't accept the truth, what does that say about our "tolerance" for the truth?! Much more can be said, but we must move on.
Not only are there those who deny absolute truth, but there are those who acknowledge absolute truth and the existence of God, and may even acknowledge the Christian God as the One True and Living God, but they believe that their good works are the basis upon which they can enter Heaven. They preach their false gospel, whether it is in the false religions of the world, which boiled down all teach the same thing: if your good works outweigh your bad works, you might get to Heaven. Or there are those who acknowledge the triune God of Christianity and the risen Christ, but then teach that faith in Christ alone is not enough: what gets us to Heaven is faith in Christ, plus our good works which are meritorious and result in our justification before the bar of God's judgment seat.
Many more examples of the counsel of the wicked could be put forward. What we must understand is that the great disaster is not that there is the counsel of the wicked…that will always be here until the Second Coming of Christ. Disaster for us occurs when we actually heed the counsel of the wicked. Once we heed the counsel of the wicked, we then are said to:
2. “stand in the path of sinners,” – This is where we do more than just listen to the counsel; we actually begin to believe and live according to the principles that are espoused by it until finally we are said to:
3. “sit in the seat of scoffers!” Eventually, the counsel of the wicked becomes a settled disposition and way of life for us. When we were standing in the path of the sinners, we were, so to speak, congregating with them, hanging out with them, and doing the things that they do. But it still wasn’t necessarily who we were. We still had our conscience, and there was still hope that we might come out of it. However, once we are in the seat of the scoffers, we have had our consciences seared as with a hot iron. Now, we not only listen to the counsel of the wicked, but we actually claim that counsel as our very own, and we become bold preachers of that counsel. The true redemptive purposes of God as found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ are ridiculed and rejected. Those who are in the seat of the scoffer don’t want to hear that they are not good enough. They don’t want to hear that the only way they can be saved is through the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. The Apostle Paul captures the mindset and the folly of the scoffer in 1 Cor 1:18-31.
Now we come to…
C. What the Blessed Man Does:
1. “his delight is in the law of the LORD,”
To delight in something is to have
great joy and desire
for something. Whereas the sinner
takes delights in the counsel of the wicked, so the one that would be blessed
must be have joy and take pleasure, not in the counsel of the ungodly, but in
the Word of God.
2. “And in His law he meditates day and night.”
It is that Counsel, the
Word of God, that
the one who would be blessed meditates upon day and night.
The counsel of the wicked would tell us that
true meditation takes place when we completely empty our mind. But in the Bible, the concept is one of
filling
our mind with God’s Word. We want to take in the Word of God, and then
keep brining it back up, and ponder it more and more. The concept of day
and night is meant to convey the continual nature of this. The importance
of memorizing Scripture cannot be overstated here. Now we
discover:
D. What The Blessed Man Is Like: “3 He will be like a tree {firmly} planted by streams of water,” The picture is one of strength and health. It is a tree that is firmly planted, not a dying tree that can be pulled up easily, and it is a tree that is planted by streams of water. A firmly planted tree is a tree whose roots run deep and strong. It is settled. We can picture the beautiful streams of water, which here no doubt are constantly nourishing the roots of the tree. As believers, the Lord Himself plants us, and roots us deep within Himself. We have been crucified with Christ, and our lives our hid with Christ Jesus, being nourished by the rivers of living water flowing within us, that is, the Holy Spirit.
Now we see 2 things that are true of such a tree:
1. Bears Fruit: “Which
yields its fruit in its season” The necessary
consequence of the tree
being firmly planted by streams of water is that this tree yields its
fruit. There is no question about
whether or not the tree will yield its fruit or not, it simply does, and it does
so “in its season” that is, when it is supposed to.
The trees that God has planted will yield its fruit, for it is this very
purpose that the trees have been planted to begin with. Like the tree that of necessity
bore fruit, so we, by our union with Christ, by necessity bear fruit (John 15:16; Eph 2:8-10).
2. Does Not Die: “And
its leaf does not wither;” Not only is this tree
deep roots, and not only does it necessarily bear fruit when it is supposed to, but it cannot die…its leaf does not wither. What a tremendous picture of those whom our God has chosen, called, justified, and glorified. They have been planted by God, they are nourished and sustained by God, they bear fruit unto God, and they will never die, as Jesus declared in John 11:25-26, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die...”
Next we see a
transition from the tree that was being used as an illustration, to the
individual:
3. Prospers - “And in whatever he does, he prospers.”
The word
"prosper" means to "succeed; to thrive, or to grow in a vigorous
way." The prospering here is related to all of
the things that were just about the tree.
We, like the tree, are planted firmly in Christ, and the rivers of Living Water
are thriving within us, causing us to vigorously be conformed to the image of
Christ. Thus, objectively,
the reason he prospers is because God has chosen him in Christ before the
foundation of the world, Christ has made a full satisfaction for his sins, and
Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to him.
There is nothing that can thwart God’s work, and there is nothing that
can cause this one to not prosper in this sense.
(see Romans 8:31-39).
In a subjective sense, we must take note of a couple of things. Notice the connection between doing and prospering. The Christian faith is not merely a bunch of propositions, though it is propositional. It is also experiential. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation, and it is by that Gospel that we are empowered to live our daily lives. What God has graciously given us, and is forming more and more in us, is a living faith, not a dead faith. A living faith is one that trusts and relies fully and completely upon the perfection of Jesus, and is firmly grounded upon the bedrock of Christ, and as it does, it of necessity produces good works. However, let us never look to those works as the basis for our right standing with God.
II. The Way of The Wicked
A.
“4 The wicked are not so,” The Psalmist now turns his
attention to the wicked. Who are
the wicked? Anyone who does not fit
the description of the man that is blessed (who will be referred to as "righteous"
a bit later). So here we are
presented with an either/or, this or that scenario.
Either one is righteous, or they are wicked.
You are either this, or you are that.
The direct opposite of everything that just described the righteous above
is true of the wicked:
1. Instead of
delighting in the Word of God day and night, they follow the counsel of the
wicked.
2. Instead of meditating on the Word of God, they sit in the seat of scornful, meditating on the counsel of the wicked and mocking and ridiculing the Word of God.
The result is that
instead of being a strong tree firmly planted by
the streams of water, they are
B.
“…like chaff which the wind drives away.”
Chaff is the worthless part of the grain that is partly dust and dirt and
is extremely light. In the act of winnowing, the individual would toss the grain
into the air with his winnowing fork, so that the wind would blow the worthless
chaff away. Instead of being
a tree firmly planted in the ground, the wicked are like the chaff, utterly
useless, and righteous judgment of God will drive them away.
The word “Therefore” introduces us to the consequences
of the wicked and the righteous.
III.
The Consequences To The Wicked
A.
“…will not stand in the judgment,” - This judgment is a
specific judgment,
judgment that will occur at the end of time, when God will separate the sheep from the goats. For believers, the pronouncement that will occur at the judgment has already been pronounced upon us, for we have already been declared righteous by virtue of Christ’s atoning work on the cross, and the imputation of His righteousness to us. Christ, as our Mediator and substitute, bore the full wrath of God for our sins in our place, and when we stand before God on judgment Day, it is the works and merits of our Mediator and Substitute that we will rest our case upon. For the wicked, they will be forced to endure the wrath of God for their sin without a Mediator, without a substitute.
B.
“Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.” With this phrase
judgment, it would seem that what is in view here is that ultimate
great assembly, the whole company of the called out ones whom God has been
please to save, as Revelation 5:9 says speaking of Christ and His church (Read
Rev 5:9).
Sinners cannot stand in this assembly, for a simple reason:
they are not righteous. The declaration of this assembly is one that is
righteous, and the reason this
assembly is righteous isn’t because of something in them, but it is because of
something that has been declared concerning them, and because of their union
with the Righteous One, Jesus Christ.
C. “the way
of the wicked will perish.” The
wicked will not be snuffed out of
as already stated, they will be forced to endure the wrath of God for their sin for eternity. Rev 14:9-11 gives us a startling picture of this (Read Rev 14:9-11).
Let us not look callously at these things beloved, and simply blow a sigh of relief that the things described here don't pertain to us since we have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and salvation, who bore the wrath that was due us on the cross. These things are terrifying, and knowing all of these things, we should endeavor to be about the business of preaching the Gospel to every creature, that they might escape the wrath that is to come, praying that God would open the hard hearts of those who sit in the seat of the scoffers.
IV.
The Consequences to The Righteous
A.
“6 For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,” This “knowing” speaks of an intense personal love and
relationship with, and speaks of God’s union with His people, and all of the
glory is owing to God and His grace alone.
B.
The exact opposite of what will happen to the wicked will happen to the
righteous
IV.
Application
We have seen how there are two ways to go: the way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked. The directions along each way are clear, and they always take us to the destination that those ways lead to. In terms of the righteous way, we need someone who has in-depth knowledge of that way to direct us, and the only one who has that in-depth knowledge is the only One who is truly righteous, the infinite God-Man, our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
As Christians,
we
obviously want to on guard against the counsel of the wicked, and make right use
of the means of grace, particularly the Word of God, as God conforms us more and
more to the image of Christ.
However,
we must also understand that the blessed man described in this passage doesn’t
describe any of us in and of ourselves. We
have all walked in the counsel of the wicked.
We have all stood in the path of sinners, we have all sat in the seat of the scoffer.
And none
of us has ever delighted in the law of the LORD perfectly, nor have we meditated
in it day and night.
Ultimately, the righteous man described in this Psalm is, as I mentioned, Jesus Christ. Beloved, let us look to the one who never walked in the counsel of the ungodly, or stood in the path of sinner, or sat in the seat of the scoffer. Trust in the One who meditated upon God’s Word day and night, and whose perfect obedience to that Word is imputed to all those who embrace Christ by faith alone. Christ alone is the Righteous and blessed Man, and in our daily lives, let us trust the One who has done all on our behalf. As we do, we will be empowered to live righteously. We will not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. As we meditate on our Great God and Savior, we will be like trees planted by the rivers of water. We will bear the fruit of righteousness, wholeheartedly clinging to the Righteous One, who nourishes us, empowers us, and equips us for every good work; and to Him alone be all of the glory.
Amen.